PARIS: With the swearing-in of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf as Liberian president and the weekend victory of Michelle Bachelet in Chile, a new generation of women are claiming a hold on power on all continents.

Elected women leaders have played important roles on the world stage for more than a quarter-century — including such iron-fisted figures as Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi and Britain’s formidable Margaret Thatcher.

In Europe and Asia, the Americas and Australia, women of the left and right have held office at the head of states and governments — but many cut lone figures on a political scene overwhelmingly dominated by men.

The simultaneous arrival of Michelle Bachelet, 54, as Chile’s first woman leader and Ms Sirleaf, 67, as Africa’s first-ever elected woman head of state, suggests that a new trend may be at work.

In Europe, the last few months saw Angela Merkel emerge as Germany’s first woman chancellor, while Finland’s Tarja Halonen looked set for re-election as president following a strong first-round performance at the weekend.

Women presidents already hold office in Ireland and Latvia, while a woman, Segolene Royal, has emerged as the clear frontrunner to be the opposition Socialist Party’s candidate in France’s 2007 presidential elections.

In Asia, several strong women leaders have emerged in the past five years — President Gloria Arroyo of the Philippines, Begum Khaleda Zia, elected prime minister of Bangladesh for a second time in 2001, and Prime Minister Helen Clark, who has governed New Zealand since 1999.

Even Africa, where women were long excluded from political life, currently has two female prime ministers: Maria do Carmo Silveira of Sao Tome et Principe and Luisa Diogo of Mozambique.

Meanwhile, in the United States, the prospect of a woman succeeding US President George Bush is no longer taboo, with both the Democrat Hillary Clinton and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice seen as strong possible contenders.

First Lady Laura Bush — who led a high-level delegation to Liberia for Sirleaf’s inauguration on Monday — has said that she expects to see a woman president of the United States within the next decade.

“I think it will happen for sure,” Bush told CNN television on Friday, immediately mentioning Rice when asked to suggest names.

Ms Rice — whose election as a black woman would be a double first for the country — has been repeatedly named in Republican circles as a possible candidate, although she insists she has no White House ambitions.

Laura Bush, who was to continue to Ghana and Nigeria on a tour focused on the work of African women, hailed Sirleaf, a Harvard-educated former World Bank official, as a beacon of hope for her sex.

“The centrepiece, really, of this trip is women’s empowerment, with Ellen Johnson Sirleaf as a shining example for all of us, for women around the world, not just women on her continent,” Bush told reporters on her way to Liberia.

Worldwide, the number of women in politics is steadily rising, although they remain severely underrepresented, according to Karine Jabre, a Swiss researcher who has studied the place of women in parliaments since 1945.

“In 1995, women made up 11.8 percent of all lower houses of parliament, rising to 13.4 percent in 2000 and 16.2 percent in 2005,” she said.

Despite notable exceptions, such as the tough-minded Thatcher, Jabre’s study also suggested that women in positions of power tended to put a greater priority on social issues than their male counterparts.

As Africa’s first elected head of state, Sirleaf has argued that women have a central role to play in restoring hope to one of the world’s most failed states, ruined by 14 years of civil war.

“The women of Liberia and the women of Africa, we must... succeed and we will,” she told the hundreds of women who came to support her ahead of her inauguration. —AFP